The Hope That Died At Soweto

June 16, 1986|By Rev. Robert V. Taylor, white South African exile serving as an Episcopal priest in White Plains, N.Y.

Ten years ago my country, South Africa, exploded as the white government responded with violence to thousands of protesting black students in Soweto, the black township of 2 million outside Johannesburg. On June 16, 1976, the students were peacefully seeking changes in the apartheid system, but the minority government believed such demands to be a threat to the system`s existence. The violent response to the protests crushed my belief in the possibility of peaceful change in my land.

Months of attempted negotiations with the white authorities had preceded the demonstrations. People such as Bishop Desmond Tutu had urged the government to make changes in black education. Tutu had warned of the highly explosive nature of the situation. Black demands had centered on the ideology of black education and the requirement that black students learn some subjects in the Afrikaans language, in addition to English and a mother tongue.

Education in South Africa, like every other facet of life, depends upon racial classification--white, colored, Indian or black. Dr. H.F. Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid and the system of black education, made it clear that such schooling should never allow blacks to rise above certain forms of labor, nor should it show them ``the green pastures of European (white)

society in which he is not allowed to graze.``

It was against this system, deliberately designed to subjugate black South Africans, that the students of Soweto were protesting. For every $1 spent on black education, the white government spends $10 on white education. Not only are black teachers expected to teach double shifts, but the schools in which they teach, unlike white schools, seldom have libraries, laboratories or playing fields.

The Soweto students began their peaceful protests hoping to force the authorities to negotiate. In return, the police and military opened fire on them. The protests rapidly spread throughout South Africa. Boycotts of classes continued for more than a year while the government refused to meet black demands. Scores of teenagers were killed and hundreds injured on the orders of the white government. The warnings of people such as Tutu had gone unheeded and their prophecies proved to be true.

At the age of 18 I had deliberately sought to see and know as much about the realities of apartheid as possible. I had seen the forced resettlements that have moved millions of black South Africans from their homes to barren wastelands, called ``homelands`` by the government. I had met people living in squatter camps with their families because that was the only way to circumvent the apartheid ideology which prevents black families from living together; and I had seen the government bulldozers move in to demolish those shacks in which people were trying to maintain their human dignity. Even in the midst of such terror I hoped that there would be a way to peacefully negotiate the end of apartheid.

Such hope was dashed by the events following June 16, a decade ago. There was the image of Hector Petersen, the first student killed by the police, his body being carried by friends, and the words of John Vorster, the white prime minister, announcing that ``law and order`` had to be maintained at any cost. The reaction of most white South Africans was one of support for the actions of the authorities. Most whites also questioned why the government had not gone further in its response. Whites rushed to arm themselves with firearms while local vigilante groups emerged in every village, town and city. At that moment I began to realize that the hope of a purely peaceful end to apartheid was unrealistic.

In the months following June 16, 1976, black students across South Africa demonstrated a new willingness to risk even their lives to end apartheid. Such widespread determination had not been seen since the Sharpeville massacre of women and the ensuing protests in 1960.

Soweto marked the beginning of a new era in my country: an era of determination to destroy apartheid and create a free and democratic country for the first time in its history. Yet white South Africa remains adamant in clinging to the basic tenets of apartheid and in refusing to negotiate with black leaders to end it. Such devotion to apartheid means ever-increasing white reliance upon violence to maintain such a hated system.